Connection, Interaction and Human Rights

An interesting infographic from the Cisco Blog on the connected world in 2015:

Imagine a world where the number of mobile-connected devices nearly equals the number of people on the planet. It’s closer than you might think, with one forecast calling for 7.1 billion devices accessing the mobile network the by 2015. It’s not just the mobile network that’s growing. When you also consider other things (PCs, laptops, tablets, etc.) connecting to the Internet, forecasts jump to 25 billion that same year and to 50 billion by 2020. This kind of growth will put a tremendous load on networks globally. But there’s more to it than that. What we really need to prepare for, aside from the sheer number of interactions, is the quality of those interactions.

Billions of devices connected are connected because they want to interact, interact on behalf of the person using them and interact with each other. It’s the interaction that’s important.

The significant switch that has already occurred is that we now assume that we will always be connected. We don’t plan for connection, we expect to be connected and get upset when we are not. That connection is a utility that we now regard as a human right. Soon we will go beyond the connection and regard access to our data as a human right too.